Cosmic duffer Mikhail Tyurin was late for his tee off time in space Wednesday evening, but 220 miles above Earth there are no foursomes behind him pressuring him to get his golf shot off. After fixing an overheating spacesuit and then a stuck exterior hatch, the spacewalk began 77 minutes behind schedule.
Because delays put his arrival at the tee in orbital darkness, Tyurin figured he’d wait a bit until dawn to make his shot with a gold-plated six-iron. The promotion for a Canadian golf club manufacturer was to be the first task for Tyurin and U.S. astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria during a six-hour spacewalk.
Their other jobs include fixing a space station antenna and retrieving science experiments. Golf fans will have a less than perfect view. Cameras are not in position on the Russian side of the space station, where the stunt will take place, although cameras on the U.S. side might be able to capture some distant images. His crewmate will set up a camera to record it for the golf club maker, Element 21 Golf Company of Toronto, to use later.
Element 21 paid an undisclosed sum for the stunt, which company officials have said commemorates the 35th anniversary of astronaut Alan Shepard’s memorable golf swing on the moon during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971. It follows other commercial ventures at the space station that the Russian space agency has allowed, sometimes to the chagrin of NASA, such as bringing aboard paying tourists.
The cash-strapped Russians also have allowed Pizza Hut to paint its logo on a rocket and have a pizza delivered to the space station. And it once charged PepsiCo $5 million to have cosmonauts float a replica of a soda can outside the Mir space station. NASA has taken a grin-and-bear-it attitude. The U.S. space agency is indebted to its Russian partner for flying U.S. astronauts to the space station while shuttles were grounded after the Columbia disaster.
The weight of the golf ball is 3 grams, only about 1/15th the weight of a normal golf ball. It weighs less to minimize any damage should it actually strike something. The company’s president Nataliya Hearn said Tyurin’s shots would travel a billion miles and stay in orbit for a couple years. But NASA’s lead spacewalk flight director, Holly Ridings the golf balls likely would only stay up two to three days and travel closer to a million miles.
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